Humphrey Appleby

It's not just the Polish League this effects. The SGP is basically getting its riders at a highly subsidised rate, and makes no contribution to those effectively doing the subsisidising. However, I don't see that the injury issue is any different as to before. The Poles simply now see there's some money to be made. Of course it is, and speedway as a whole will likely end up the loser. I think it's a case of tweedle dum or tweedle dee, but it might start raising questions about how actually should run the sport and who should benefit.

If anyone with decision-making powers in Sky reads thus, they'll certainly wonder why they should bother with the sport. They have/had an agreement to pay x to British speedway, and it's to the BSPA to decide how to distribute that. Nevertheless, the coverage is primarily on the back of Elite League speedway, so it hardly seems unreasonable it gets the lion's share.

There will still always be teams with more money than others, but the rest still need to try to compete for riders. It's a vicious cycle, which is why you can't have a free-for-all in sport, particularly the marginal ones. The other issue of course, is there are few promoters who run speedway teams as a profession these days. Teams are essentially run by fan promoters with other businesses whose common sense goes out the window when it comes to speedway. I'm sure they know they're going to lose money, but without a fundamental restructuring of the sport as a whole, they're forced to pay the going rate for riders in order to sign a competitive team. It's actually an issue that exists right throughout all professional sport.

That was my point, but that's apparently arrogant according to TWK.

What a silly response. In any declining industry, workers may sadly find themselves out of work. Just look at the shipbuilders who're being laid off, and whilst we can all have sympathy with their predicament, there are simply insufficient ships to build and therefore insufficient income to maintain the same numbers. So how do expect EL standard riders to be employed in future then? If they can't ride in other leagues or are unwilling to drop to PL wages, where do you expect them to go? So that's fine then? They can just all go bankrupt and everyone in the PL will be happy. Except, do you not think there will an influx from the riders put out of work who will have an inflationary pressure on the model of perfection that's the PL? The PL is cost effective precisely because the expensive riders compete elsewhere at the moment.

Sadly, they'll either have to drop their expectations or become collateral damage if British speedway can no longer afford them. Some of the losses may be exaggerated, but BEL has been largely run on sugar daddies and the Sky largesse for the past few years.

Used to be plenty of 16 year olds put into races. I seem to recall Joe Screen and Carl Stonehewer doing okay, amongst others.

A total of 31 teams in 3 leagues ran this season, of which 28 were standalone teams. All you'd be doing is distributing teams over 2 larger leagues rather than 3, which would still allow some riders to double-up. If the top league was pitched closer to the current BPL, which seems likely anyway given the loss of Sky money and generally poor economic condition of the current BEL, then I don't really see there's any issue with the better BPL riders 'moving up'.

We can hark back to failures or con tricks forever, or try to be realistic about the way forward. The simple fact of the matter is that the different leagues cannot exist in glorious isolation and are always part of the wider ecosystem.

Do we actually have any evidence that Sky influenced any of these things? The tactical ride was undoubtedly more down to being a cost-saving mechanism, whilst 'playoffs' have been introduced in many sports. I personally don't consider these changes to be that heinous if they revitalise the sport, and few would disagree that the 'playoffs' maintain interest to the end of the season and tend to draw good crowds. The double points nonsense admittedly doesn't do much for the credibility of the sport, but there are far worse problems that need to be addressed.

Two leagues of 15 or 16 teams would generate 28-30 fixtures just riding home and away once. Variety and probably enough meetings.

Maybe two big leagues. 14-16 in an enlarged top flight but with lower costs (so 4-6 teams would move-up), and the rest in the National League.

Not entirely sure of the European Grasstrack Championship either, when there's already a World Longtrack/Grasstrack Championship that seems to be struggling for hosts. If nowhere in Germany, the spiritual home of longtrack, wants to host next season, and they're having to resort to 'long' speedway tracks, then that's a very sorry state of affairs.

Errr.. surely the point is that cheaper EL means lesser crowds are needed to make it pay, and perhaps a wider variety of teams may be more attractive.

It's pointless whilst speedway leagues are organised in the current way, but it could work if it was pitched as a standalone premier competition (possibly in conjunction with an extended SGP) on the basis of one rider, one team. Not necessarily people in the UEM, but those who see it can be used as vehicle for their agendas. Half of FIM Europe seems to be the same bunch of Italians that were there previously...

Motorcycle sport is obviously multi-discipline which complicates any overarching structure, and track racing is itself quite removed from most forms of motorcycle sport. I do not see the need for both a global and continental body controlling speedway (and other track racing disciplines) though, not least because speedway is primarily European based anyway. Since it was created, the UEM has basically gone around and created hordes of pointless competitions. It probably mattered little whilst they remained relatively low key, but someone has obviously realised they can use these to gain political leverage, and now we're likely to see destructive in-fighting in what's already a marginal sport.

I haven't looked at figures too closely in the past seasons, but there's always been a number of BPL teams that have done as well or better crowd-wise than the BEL. The problem was that costs in the BEL were something like 60% higher due to the riders being used, so teams needed someone willing to underwrite the inevitable losses. The other issue was race days, as I think a high percentage of BPL teams need to race Friday, Saturday or Sunday. The SGP increasingly made it unattractive for weekend teams to race in the BEL, so that well have been another discouragement. If it's accepted that the top flight can no longer hope to attract the top riders, and costs come down substantially as a result, then it may well prove more attractive for some teams to move up. Conversely, without certain teams in the BPL, it may induce other teams to move down to the National League, heralding a return to a two-tier system. I think the traditional 'them-and-us' views espoused by BPL fans are a little short-sighted, as a cost-effective structure for the sport is dependent on integrated approach. Without a top flight, there will likely always be a few teams wanting to sign much better riders than other teams in the league, and that inevitably pushes up costs. The BPL is a 'success' precisely because there is a BEL for the 'ambitious' teams to race and bankrupt themselves in. Yes, but as discussed before, it's difficult to achieve a meaningful regional split with the current distribution of teams. Some teams in the Midlands would still be faced with long trips north, whilst hardly meeting (or not meeting at all) neighbouring teams that just happen to fall into another region. Moreover, the likes of Ipswich to Plymouth is not far off the distance between Ipswich and Berwick (346 vs 326 miles), so you'd not necessarily be saving as much travel as imagined.

That's a different issue of course, but I remember it was said the British leagues were just being inflexible by wanting to ride on Fridays and Saturdays. The main professional leagues should have got together years ago to coordinate fixtures, use of riders, and to ensure they benefited if they gave up prime dates to the SGP. However, they were more concerned with competing with each other rather than addressing the real issue - all the while BSI were skimming off the cream. It's only taken 13 years for the penny to finally drop...

Yes, but I guess the acquisition of income is much more the remit of the FIM Board and GA, than the CCP. I'd see it more along the lines of what happened in F1, where the Constructors' Association led by Ecclestone wrested effective control of the F1 World Championship and kept most of the income whilst staying under the umbrella of the FIA. More than 3 million quid is going out of speedway under the current arrangements.

This of course assumes that national speedway competitions continue to respect the authority of the FIM. Or perhaps Poland is the dog, because no-one makes a living out of FIM competitions? As far as I can see though, there's not a single person with a track racing background in any position of authority within the FIM these days.

What have the number of World Champions got to do with it? As far as I can tell, speedway is only ridden in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, Argentina and possibly South Africa outside of Europe. I doubt any rider in these countries is making any sort of living from it either. There are more than 20 countries in Europe where speedway is ridden, and 4 or 5 of these have professional leagues. Virtually every World Championship meeting is staged in Europe, and 90% of the line-ups were European riders.

Yes, but where exactly in Riga is the GP going to be held? The largest stadium is rectangular and used for football during the summer, which really only leaves the Daugava Stadium which has a capacity of just 5,000. It's maybe possible to put some temporary stands on the bends, but there seems to be limited space to do it. The back straight seems to have trees all the way down it.

I hold no particular candle for BSI, but what exactly would be achieved by this? The traditional race day in Poland is Sunday, so why deliberately move to an off-day just out of spite. Questioning in whose benefit the top flight of the sport is run is long overdue, but are Onesport planning to put a more benevolent structure in place, or just looking to usurp BSI? Otherwise it just comes over as overtly nationalist rhetoric rather than meaningful change.

Their federations can in principle apply for places in the GP qualifiers, and this has happened in past years. I doubt getting places in GP Challenge could be justified though.

What about the New Zealand, Canadian, Argentinian and South African championships? How would their riders get a look-in?